Firefighters on high alert in Ventura County

The wildfire risk is high in Ventura County, but conditions aren't nearly as bad as in Santa Barbara, fire and weather experts said Thursday.

Ventura and Santa Barbara counties are both experiencing the unholy trinity of fire weather: heat, wind and low humidity. But while temperatures in some parts of Ventura County are approaching triple digits, the winds are much milder and the humidity much higher than in Santa Barbara, said Stuart Seto, a weather specialist with the National Weather Service's Oxnard office.

The "sundowner" winds that whipped through the Santa Barbara canyons and made the fire impossible to stop Wednesday are a local phenomenon, he said. They're caused by an entirely different meteorological process than the one that brings Santa Ana winds through Ventura County.

Sundowner winds were expected to again hit 60 mph overnight in Santa Barbara, Seto said. In Ventura County, the forecast was for winds up to 25 mph in populated areas, although there was a high-wind warning for the county's mountain ranges.

In Ventura County, temperatures today were expected to reach the 80s near the coast and the 90s inland, Seto said. The National Weather Service is predicting cooler weather over the weekend.

Bill Nash, a spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department, said the conditions Thursday constituted a "high fire danger."

There are 76 Ventura County firefighters in Santa Barbara fighting the Jesusita fire. To make sure the homefront is still protected, the department is at "special staffing levels," Nash said, which means no one goes home unless given specific orders to leave.

"Our primary mission is to make sure the people of Ventura County are protected," Nash said.

The Jesusita blaze is the region's first large wildfire in a year that many experts predict will contain many more. Nash said the Ventura County Fire Department is bracing for a bad summer because years of below-average rainfall have left the brush dry and flammable.

"All you have to do is look around, and you can see the hills are drying out very quickly," he said.

The department no longer thinks in terms of a "fire season" over the summer and fall, Nash said. Instead, it prepares for wildfires year-round. But there is definitely a period from June through November when the danger is highest, and the Jesusita fire marks an early start to the season, he said.